There always has been a clear objective for potential human space explorers who are alive today—Mars. After the lunar landings, the red planet was the next natural goal. If the papers presented in Beijing at the 64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) are an indication—and they are—nothing has changed in the subsequent 40 years.

Completes mission, but some new capabilities do not work

Orbital Sciences' Cygnus berths at ISS to complete COTS demo

J-2X engine will go on the shelf as tight funds slow exploration

Russia's Proton M launch vehicle returned to flight Sept. 30, nearly two months after a July 2 mishap sent the heavy-lift rocket and three Russian Glonass M satellites crashing to the ground at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Early peer-reviewed results of soil-sample analysis by an instrument on the Curiosity Mars rover hold potentially good news for future human explorers who will need to live off the land as much as possible, and bad news for scientists looking for evidence of past life on the planet.

I began my career in the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry as an export sales manager for a European missile manufacturer (now MBDA). It was a somewhat unusual career move for a business school graduate with no engineering background. Today, even fewer graduates have A&D high on their lists when they look for jobs as sales or marketing managers. This is, after all, an industry built by engineers, and its reputation is based primarily on products and the technological innovations that underpin them.

New Russian launch site aimed at curbing reliance on Baikonur